


beneath your hollow bones

by potter



Category: Hannibal (TV), Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: (Eventual) cannibalism, Alternate Universe - Hannibal (TV) Fusion, F/F, Horror, I don't know, I'm Sorry, Murder, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 22:23:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14530521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potter/pseuds/potter
Summary: After a shooting gone wrong, an increasingly unstable Sarah Manning was asked to leave the FBI. Now, with an obsessive serial killer on the loose, the Bureau is forced to bring her back in, on one condition: that Sarah be supervised by renowned psychologist Rachel Duncan.





	beneath your hollow bones

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: graphic depictions of violence, often against women; eventual cannibalism; Hannibal levels of gore

The Bureau sends Dr. Cormier, which is smart, or stupid, or both. She looks so out of place in her $2000 overcoat, drinking under-strained tea out of Sarah’s only mug, shifting this way and that to avoid the dog hair that she will inevitably still be picking off her clothes in three weeks time, that Sarah almost wants to agree just out of sheer amusement. 

Almost.

“- Understand your position, Sarah,” Cormier is saying. She’s said it twice already, striking hard on a different word every time, _understand_ your position, understand _your_ position, understand your _position_. “But you must understand ours as well.” 

“You made your _position_ pretty clear last time,” Sarah says. Cormier looks wounded, which isn’t necessarily what Sarah was going for, but close enough.

“Sarah,” she says, _Sah-rra_ , “surely enough time has passed…” 

Leda is pawing at Sarah’s leg. Sarah calls her off with a sharp _tsst_ , thinks about making the same noise at Cormier. “Come back and ask when the money’s all spent. Might get a different answer then.” 

That’s not going to happen. Even without Siobhan’s savings, The Bureau forced her to take a pension so excessive that if she clips coupons and learns what a mutual fund is, she can live in semi-comfort for at least ten years more. By then, she’ll be useless to the FBI: nobody’s gonna want a profiler who hasn’t set foot on a crime scene in over a decade, who can barely reconstruct her own daughter’s memory, let alone the detritus of a life too soon gone. 

Even if that profiler is Sarah Manning.

“Oh, shit, yeah, I remember her – didn’t she go crazy?” 

“ _Go_ crazy?” 

The ghosts laugh. Cormier is staring at her. 

“What?” It comes out more snarl than word; fitting, given that she’s only had the dogs for company these last three years. Cormier doesn’t look any more perturbed than she was before, which Sarah supposes is a point in her favor. At least time hasn’t smoothed down her memories of Sarah, haven’t substituted _quirkiness_ or _idiosyncrasy_ for what Sarah has resigned herself to call _insanity_. Sarah might sic the dogs on her if she did. 

Cormier reaches into her bag. Pulls out a thin file. She sets it on the table. Carefully opens it. Pushes it towards Sarah.

Sarah looks. Sarah could never not look. 

Six pictures. Six identical pictures, six identical women all laid to rest on iron gray slabs. But, no… Like a magic eye painting, the differences begin to make themselves apparent as Sarah leans in: a mole here, a broken nose there. Six brown haired women, then, with days-dead skin and dark black thread stitching their lips up tight. 

And-

The world glitches.

 _He doesn’t like this part, the coward, the craven child, he’ll cut their bellies clean without a prayer but he’s on his knees weeping when I try to make them_ whole _, oh, Lord, forgive my sins as I forgive his, as I cannot forgive theirs-_

Lips stitched up tight. Dark brown hair. 

_Lord, we do this for You, but I cannot hear Your praise, I do not ask for much but I do ask what will it take, how many bodies must we lay before You before you lay your grace unto us-_

Dark brown hair. 

Kira’s was lighter. Softer.

The chair scrapes. The dogs whine. 

“Sarah.” 

Cool hands on her face. A rustle of silk; a chipped mug, forced to her lips. Sarah cannot meet Cormier’s eyes even as she accepts the water from her hand. 

“When did you find the seventh?” she hears herself ask.

“Two hours ago.” Something unspoken. Something Cormier is begging her not to ask. Something they both know she must.

“What else connects them? – Please, Delphine, I’m not stupid, and neither are you. You wouldn’t be here if it was just- What else connects them?” 

Delphine lowers the cup, but she doesn’t move. She smells like something Sarah can’t quite place. “They’ve been removed. Cut out,” she says, although she doesn’t sound like she believes herself. “They’ve all had their ovaries cut out.” 

 

They drive straight to the crime scene. The car is silent, for the most part. At one point, Cormier’s hand strays towards the radio, but thankfully she thinks better of it before damage can be done. She seems like she wants to talk, though. Sarah looks out the window. 

The seventh body is in a field, which is brown and hard with permafrost. From a distance, the caution tape looks like a yellow Mayday ribbon, whipping this way and that in its frenzy to announce the incoming spring, until they get close enough to see that, no, it’s just to mark a young woman’s corpse. 

There’s a small crowd gathered, mostly police, although there are a few people already straining their necks by the perimeter. No reporters yet, thank god – Sarah knows that pictures of her, back on the job, will be splattered over Tattlecrime by tomorrow morning at the latest, but it’s nice to not have to think about it yet. 

The scene techs are kneeling near the corpse. Sarah has never met either of them before: they’re younger than she’s used to, although she supposes that she’s older than she was before. They don’t stand up when Cormier and Sarah approach, although one of them, a girl with black-rim glasses and dreads, grins wide enough to show her teeth.

“Took your time, Del.” 

Cormier’s expression doesn’t change, although if Sarah was to unfocus her eyes and let the world glitch at the edges, she’s sure there would be a crime scene’s worth of evidence in that stillness. She doesn’t care, though, and so she doesn’t. She crosses her arms instead, ignoring the introductions and focusing her gaze on the white sheet. She can see the tips of the woman’s fingertips poking out from underneath. Bone white. Strangely small. 

_He likes them small; I was small, too, and I still am, although wilted, wilted on the vine, wilted from the inside-out_ -

“It’s great to meet you.” Sarah belatedly realizes she’s being addressed, and the world glitches back into place. She hadn’t even realized she was gone. The tech with dreads shoots that toothy grin her way. “We’re both huge fans, Dr. Manning – Scott cited like, five of your papers in his dissertation.” 

The other lab tech shoots Dreads a glare, but his expression turns equally fawning as he looks at Sarah. “I, yeah, it really is a huge honor, Dr. Manning- I was actually, if you’re back with the Bureau-“ 

“Oh, wow, _are_ you? Back with the Bureau?” 

“- If you have some time, fifteen or twenty minutes, or coffee, to get your thoughts on developmental risk factors in female spree killers, it’s what I’m researching now-“ 

“I never got my PhD.” 

Scott blinks. Dreads blinks, too. Cormier looks like she regrets every decision in her life that led her to this stupid, corpse-filled Virginian field. 

“What?”

“It’s not Dr. Manning,” Sarah says, looking at the corpse, because it’s easier than looking at a person. “I left to join the Bureau in my third year, and after I got fired they didn’t want me back. So. It’s not Dr. Manning. It’s just.” She shrugs. Feels eyes on her. Wishes, not for the first time, that she could will people blind on command. “Just Sarah.” 

She’s walking towards the body before anyone can react. Dreads mutters something – worried, maybe, or scared, or, whatever – and Cormier makes her voice soft and reassuring in response. Sarah wonders when they started fucking. 

She reaches down and pulls the sheet off of the corpse. 

“Oh,” Sarah says.

 

Sarah and Cormier both avoided the subject with such purpose that on the ride over here, Sarah was halfway able to convince herself that what she’d seen wasn’t real. 

But, no: there she is. There the corpse is. There the body is, on the ground, with her lips stitched tight and her torso cut clean and her hair, her brown, almost black hair, fanned out beneath her like a corpse bride, waiting forever now. There the body is, with a face that could, if one looked at it from a distance, or not closely at all, be Sarah’s face, still, and quiet, and at peace. 

“Oh,” Sarah says. And then she stops talking.

**Author's Note:**

> me: i like hannibal and orphan black, what fun and good disparate interests  
> me: would be a shame if i........ruined them both
> 
> 1) I'M SORRY  
> 2) this is going to be a very very VERY loose hannibal au; a general spoiler warning for hannibal, but i mean, it's about gay cannibalism so, ? eventually rachel duncan will eat a corpse, fair warning  
> 3) i am the world's slowest writer and i don't have any of this mapped out, so expect updates to be sporadic at best  
> 3) i'm sorry
> 
> please come castigate me on [tumblr](http://chav.tumblr.com/)


End file.
